WordiBop

Cats Word Search

72 hand-picked cat words — pedigree breeds, their wild cousins, and the sunbeams and windowsills of life alongside one. Easy, medium and hard grids, printable in-page or as a PDF pack.

WordiBop.com — Cats Word Search

The puzzle that hides like a cat

A word search is the most catlike of puzzles: something is sitting in plain sight, perfectly still, quietly watching you fail to see it. This one hides an entire cattery — and the trick to finding it is knowing how cat words like to disappear.

  • 72 cat words in this puzzle's pool, pedigree to alley
  • 70+ breeds recognised by the largest cat registry — ours picked for the grid
  • 5 words carrying an X — an unusually feline letter

X marks the cat

Every themed list has a signature letter, and for cats it is X — one of the scarcest letters in English, yet here 5 words carry it: SPHYNX, MANX, LYNX, CHARTREUX and TUXEDO. An X in the grid is practically a paw print. The doubles are on your side too: the RR of PURR, the SS of HISS and ABYSSINIAN, the TT of KITTEN and LITTER, the LL of RAGDOLL, HAIRBALL and WINDOWSILL — pairs jump out of a wall of letters long before single letters do.

A map that mostly lies

Dog breeds wear their birthplaces honestly; cat breeds treat geography as decoration. SIAMESE and KORAT really are Thai, ANGORA really is Ankara, and MANX cats really do come from the Isle of Man. But BALINESE cats have never been near Bali — American breeders named the longhaired Siamese for the grace of Balinese dancers. BOMBAY was bred in Kentucky to look like a miniature black panther. HIMALAYAN is named for its colour pattern (shared with Himalayan rabbits), not the mountains, and CYMRIC — Welsh for “Welsh” — was developed in Canada. Even the ABYSSINIAN probably isn't Abyssinian: its genetics point toward the Indian Ocean coast. Finding them all is a geography lesson in scepticism.

Named by people who clearly loved them

Where the names aren't borrowed geography, they're small acts of affection:

  • RAGDOLL Named for what the first ones did when picked up — go completely, trustingly limp, like the toy.
  • LYKOI Greek for “wolves” — the patchy-coated “werewolf cat”, and proof the list rewards solvers who know the strange ones.
  • TOYGER Exactly what it sounds like: toy plus tiger, a breed created to put a three-kilogram tiger on the sofa.
  • NEBELUNG From the German Nebel, mist — “creature of the mist”, for a silvery longhair that drifts around corners.

The wild side of the list

Fifteen wild cousins prowl the same grids, from the household names — LION, TIGER, LEOPARD, JAGUAR — to cats that deserve to be better known: the tufted-eared CARACAL, the long-legged SERVAL, the tree-dwelling MARGAY. The dividing line through the cat family runs on sound, not size: the four big roarers can't manage a proper steady purr, while CHEETAH and PUMA — enormous as they are — purr exactly like the cat on your lap. Which side an OCELOT falls on is the kind of thing you get to look up after you've circled it.

Packs, and the rest of the menagerie

The PDF pack button under the grid builds all-cat puzzle packs from this same list — up to ten fresh grids with an answer key, sized for classrooms, waiting rooms and long train rides. When you've cleared the cattery, the dogs word search covers the other side of the household rivalry, the animals hub holds the whole kingdom, and the daily word search deals one shared grid a day. Best times on this page are stored separately — your dogs record is safe, whichever side you play for.